A foundation run by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Time is looking to buy the closed St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles out of bankruptcy for $135 million and reopen it to treat coronavirus patients, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, a nonprofit founded about a decade ago by Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele B. Chan, has agreed to serve as the lead bidder to acquire St. Vincent from the hospital’s bankrupt owner, Verity Health System of California Inc., according to court papers. The proposed deal comes as California looks to ramp up critical medical access and provide other essential health-care services. While California has only about 6,900 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is gearing up to add 50,000 more hospital beds statewide to cope with the growing number of Covid-19 infections. A South Africa-born surgeon turned entrepreneur, Dr. Soon-Shiong said in an interview he is particularly concerned about the Los Angeles homeless population, which city officials estimated last year at more than 36,000. St. Vincent’s, a 366-bed facility, shut its doors in January after a previous deal to sell it fell apart. Opened in 1856, it was Los Angeles’s first hospital.
